The present invention relates generally to a plasma display panel, particularly to a surface-discharge type plasma display panel.
A surface-discharge type plasma display panel is formed by alternatively placing a plurality of maintaining electrodes X, Y. When such a surface-discharge plasma display panel is driven, a unit display period is divided into an address period and a sustain period. During the address period, either a selective writing address method or a selective erasing address method is used, so that wall electric charges are accumulated in discharge cells (to be lighted) successively from one displaying line to another. During the sustain period, sustain pulses are alternatively applied to maintaining electrodes X, Y on all the displaying lines, so as to effect a desired discharge emission.
However, in the above-described structure, since an electrode X and an electrode Y are situated adjacent to one another between two displaying lines, an electric potential difference occurs between two displaying lines during the sustain period. In order to prevent undesired panel discharge, it is necessary to enlarge a space between every two displaying lines. As a result, since a pitch between every two displaying lines has to be enlarged, it is difficult to obtain a plasma display panel having a compact structure with a high precision.
Recently, there have been two suggestions to solve the above-described problems.
One suggestion is an arrangement shown in FIG. 5. In FIG. 5, A denotes column electrodes (address electrodes), L denotes displaying lines corresponding to individual row electrode pairs (maintaining electrodes X,Y). As illustrated in FIG. 5, maintaining electrodes X, Y are arranged in a manner such that their mutual positional relationship are alternatively changed from one displaying line L to another.
Another suggestion is an arrangement as shown in FIG. 6. As illustrated in FIG. 6, each maintaining electrode X is positioned between two adjacent maintaining electrodes Y (such as Y1 and Y2, Y3 and Y4) being driven selectively and successively.
In the above arrangement shown in FIG. 5, since every two maintaining electrodes forming an interval space between the two electrodes, are two same electrodes X, X or two same electrodes Y, Y, there will be no electric potential difference therebetween during the sustain period. However, if an electrode X or an electrode Y is disconnected, it will become impossible to perform predetermined displaying operation. As a result, the disconnection of an electrode X or an electrode Y will reduce the efficiency of a plasma display panel when in use. Moreover, repairing the disconnected electrode has been proved to be expensive in cost.
Further, in the above arrangement shown in FIG. 6, the number of electrodes X may be reduced by half so as to form a compact plasma display panel with a high precision. However, since one electrode X is used for two adjacent displaying lines, partition walls have to be made as having a thin strip-like shape. As a result, there will be a problem that an electric discharge occurring in one discharge cell S11 will jump through the electrode X and arrive at another discharge cell S12, causing a mistaken discharge. To prevent such a mistaken discharge, it has been suggested to have partition walls arranged in a lattice-like manner. This, however, requires that the partition walls in a lattice-like arrangement be made with an extremely high precision, resulting in an increased cost in manufacturing process.